What's the best course for the future of public education in post-Katrina New Orleans?

If you were looking for an answer at a hearing Thursday night in the jam-packed McDonogh No. 35 High School Auditorium, it would depend on when you showed up and whom you heard.

The state education department convened the meeting to collect input on state Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek's proposal for a gradual transfer of control of some high-performing schools from the state-run Recovery School District to Orleans Parish.

Members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, sitting in a row on the stage, heard plenty from the people who filled every one of the auditorium's 450 seats and stood, bunched in, along the back wall. They turned in 85 comment cards -- a requirement for anyone who wanted 90 seconds to address the board -- and they approached a microphone in a steady stream into the night.

Many of the first wave of speakers said that the Recovery School District should turn over control to the Orleans Parish School Board as quickly as possible because their children were denied services or being shuttled around the city in an attempt to find a school.

"You lied to the parents," Nikkisha Napoleon said in a fiery address that drew applause and cheers and cries of "Preach."

"We have injustice in the RSD system," she said.

An issue of control

A major issue, speakers said, is control that is local instead of in Baton Rouge. The Pastorek plan is "a total failure," said Leon Clark, who invoked the civil rights leaders W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech he delivered in a thunderous voice.

"Give us back our schools," he said to loud applause.

Then came a wave of parents and teachers who couldn't find enough good things to say about charter schools, which have mushroomed around New Orleans, and wanted nothing to do with the Orleans Parish School Board, which, in post-storm reorganization has been stripped of all but 16 of New Orleans' best schools, mostly charter schools whose day-to-day operations are governed by individual boards.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the board acquired a reputation for corruption and mismanagement, and that weighed heavily on Kyla Muse, the mother of a KIPP Central City student.

"I personally believe that until we see further improvement by OPSB schools to match what KIPP Central City offers, there should not be any consideration given regarding Orleans Parish being able to oversee additional schools," she said.

Charter school cheerleaders

James Watson, a Sophie B. Wright Charter School parent, was part of a small army of parents and teachers who wore their sentiments on the front of their red T-shirts: "I support quality education" and "Charter schools." They cheered and brandished pompoms when their partisans spoke.

Watson was one of them.

"If schools are going to be transferred back to Orleans Parish, let them take the failing schools and fix them," he said. "I don't think they should take the ones that aren't broken."

Board members will use what they heard Thursday night to help them decide on Dec. 9 to return at least some of the RSD schools to local control.

"We would like to be at the table when the decision is made," said Darryl Kilbert, Orleans Parish Schools superintendent, to loud, long applause.

Pastorek's plan, which is at www.louisianaschools.net, recommends that all 68 RSD schools in New Orleans stay put for the next two years. Next September, schools meeting academic eligibility standards could begin the transfer process but would not actually leave the district until the 2012-13 year. Each eligible school would make its own decision about whether to choose local control or to stay in the RSD.

Under Pastorek's plan, no school is eligible to leave yet. Some have not been in existence long enough to show two consecutive years of improvement, while others have not quite cleared the performance bar.

"This is uncharted territory. There is no textbook model," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in a brief address before the procession of speakers began. "Let's be patient, and let's be respectful."